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Although politics have been the main talk of the day on social networks in Colombia in the last few months, with the March 14 and the upcoming May 30 elections, activity intensifies in the mornings, when radio networks interview the candidates or the politicians who support them, looking for ‘interesting’ remarks, or when a debate is being broadcast on television or streamed online.

Juan Manuel Santos and Antanas Mockus are the front-runners, but analysts and some people agree that the best performers on debates are centre-right Germán Vargas Lleras, liberal Rafael Pardo and left-wing Gustavo Petro (coincidentally or not, the three have been or are Congressmen). Unfortunately for them, televised debates have little influence [es] in voters’ decision, as opinion polls show. This view is also shared by some on Twitter (most of the context of this post can be found on our May 26 piece on Colombian elections), despite somecriticism [es].

Here is a sampling of tweets by Colombians, which cover a wide range of election subjects:

Voting for Noemí because she's a woman would be making the same mistake Americans made for those that voted for Obama because he's black… or Bolivians who voted for Evo [Morales] just because he's indigenous

Finally, an article on a decree (Decreto 1800 de 2010) by the Interior Ministry on security measures for the election day was panned by journalists [es] —which called it “censorship”— and twitterers (even mocking and challengingminister Fabio Valencia Cossio). The article 9 of the decree states that only public order information “confirmed by official sources” can be reproduced by the media, which may tamper with the impact of initiatives such as Ushahidi-powered Elecciones Transparentes or simple denouncements of vote-buying and other irregularities on election day by people in Twitter or Facebook.